Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A man wearing a rack of ribs; goats' heads popping out of a ball of blue fur; headless dolls on plates; a vat of soy sauce cooking a man and a boar; the images in New China New Art are striking and sometimes shocking. Many depict violence, exploitation, degradation, the crassness of capitalism and the oppression of Mao Zedong's regime.

The book, editied by Richard Vine, Senior Editor for Asia of Art in America magazine, features paintings, photos, sculptures, performance art and video art from dozens of contemporary Chinese artists. While the cultural changes in the nation's recent history are reflected in the work, Vine says in the opening chapter, "the focus of this book is more concrete, based on the conviction that artworks are generated by individuals, working with particular materials, under their own set of circumstances."

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

When political cartoonist Mark Fiore originally approached Apple with a pitch to have his cartoon strip NewsTunes available as an app. for the i-phone, the company turned him down, saying their policy was not to use apps that made fun of public figures.

Months later, Fiore won the Pulitzer Prize, and now i-phone owners can download his work.

From PC World:

"'It feels a little weird, it feels almost dirty, like I got preferential treatment because of the Pulitzer and because of press hubbub because of the app' Fiore told the SF Gate."

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

While there's still a lot to learn and to ascertain about this week's tragedy at Massey Energy's mine, Upper Big Branch, in WVA, you may be interested in researching past mining disasters. Use our online catalog to search for titles we own. These will include books, Senate hearings, and videos. Here's a brief sampling:

Schwartz-Barcott, T.P. After The Disaster: Re-creating Community and Well-being at Buffalo Creek Since the Notorious Mining Disaster in 1972. Cambria, 2008. HN79.B847 2008.

Dotson-Lewis, B.L. Sago Mine Disaster: Featured Story, Appalachian Coalfield Stories. Infinity, 2007.TN 313.D68 2007. Available in Special Collections (best to make an appointment).

Sago Mine Disaster and an Overview of Mine Safety: Hearing Before A Subcommittee of the Committe on Appropriations, United States Senate...

We own many government documents concerning mine safety. Using our catalog , conduct a search. One good search string is "mine" AND "safety" and "coal." Our government document collection is on the 2nd floor--you may ask a reference librarian for help in locating your citation.

Celebrate National Library Week, April 11-17th with Bob E. Cat at the Ort Library. Students, drop by the Circulation desk and enter the "Guess the Number of Tootsie Rolls in the Jar" contest. This year's lucky winner will receive a $25.00 gift certificate to Appalachian Station presented by Bob E. Cat himself. The winning student will also receive the jar of candy and be photographed with Bob to appear on his Facebook page. Look for posters all over campus of Bob highlighting different Library services. Bobcats thrive @ the Lewis J. Ort Library!

Thursday, April 1, 2010

BOM (Book of the Month) for April: Reading In the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. Stanislas Dehaene. Viking, 2009.

Author of The Number Sense, Dehaene explores how our neurons must be rewired when we, as children, begin to learn to read. Per the dust jacket, "Dehaene convincingly argues that the emergence of cultural inventions, including writing, is constrained by the prior architecture of our primate brain."

The book is an astonishingly thorough investigation of all facets of the intricate workings of the human mind as it reads. Essential for educators, fascinating for anyone who loves language.

As of April 1, 2010, the database Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA) will be available free of charge on the Getty Research Institute Web site. In January of 2010 The Getty Research Institute announced that it was no longer financially feasible to maintain BHA and solicited other interested institutions to step forward and take over maintenance of the database. With no suitable arrangement immediately available, the Getty decided to act on its commitment to the scholarly community by providing access to BHA directly from its own Web site.

BHA on the Getty Web site offers both basic and advanced search modules, and can be searched easily by subject, artist, author, article or journal title, and other elements. Note that the database search includes both BHA (covering 1990-2007) and the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), covering the years 2008 and part of 2009. The Répertoire de la litterature de l’art (RILA), one of the predecessors of BHA, with records that cover 1975-1989, will be online by May 1.

The Bibliography of the History of Art is the most comprehensive art bibliography available worldwide, covering European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. This database indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealers' catalogs, and articles from over 4,300 periodicals. Broad in scope, the bibliography's citations encompass fine arts-painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, architecture-as well as decorative and applied arts-crafts, graphic arts, and folk and popular art among them.

Please take advantage of this fantastic resource that Frostburg students, faculty, and staff wouldn't ordinarily have access to. Since this database is offered over the open Web and not via Research Port, you will not see the FIND IT button on any of the records. If you locate an item within the database you would like to get a hold of, please email me at kadetterbeck@frostburg.edu or call me at 301-687-4425 and I would be happy to help you get access to the resource.